Introdução: Alterações pulmonares estruturais e funcionais podem ocorrer na dermatomiosite juvenil (DMJ). O objetivo foi avaliar a função pulmonar de pacientes com DMJ e analisar correlações entre os valores encontrados e os escores: tomográfico, de atividade e dano cumulativo da doença e qualidade de vida. Métodos: Estudo prospectivo, transversal, com 20 pacientes com DMJ entre 6 e 18 anos. Realizados testes de espirometria, pletismografia, difusão de monóxido de carbono (DLCO), teste de caminhada de 6 minutos (TCam6min) e tomografia de tórax (TC). Avaliados também: escores de atividade da doença (DAS), força muscular (CMAS e MMT), dano cumulativo (MDI) e qualidade de vida (PedsQL). Resultados: Vinte pacientes foram incluídos (média de 11,6 anos). Houve obstrução leve ou moderada em 35% dos pacientes, redução da difusão em 20%. Anormalidades espirométricas e/ou da difusão em 45% dos pacientes. Na pletismografia: CPT reduzida em 25% dos pacientes, condutância em 50% e relação VR/CPT em 35%. Treze pacientes realizaram TC sendo 8 alteradas com padrão intersticial(n=6) e misto(n=2). As correlações significativas (p < 0,05) foram: VEF1/CV versus DAS, PedsQL, CMAS e TC; condutância versus DAS, MDI e PedsQl; TCam6Min versus CMAS; DLCO versus MDI e CMAS; TC versus MDI, FEF 25%-75%, condutância, CMAS, PedsQL e DAS. Conclusão: A pletismografia, DLCO e o TCam6min são testes complementares na detecção de distúrbios funcionais em pacientes com DMJ. A existência de correlações significativas entre os parâmetros funcionais, estruturais e de dano cumulativo demonstram que as anormalidades da função pulmonar podem ter relação com o controle, gravidade e atividade da doença e influenciar na qualidade de vida desses pacientes. O distúrbio funcional obstrutivo, por doença inflamatória das vias aéreas, pode ser uma alteração precoce da doença pulmonar na DMJ / Background: Structural and functional pulmonary changes may occur in juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM). The objective of this study was to assess the pulmonary function of patients with JDM and the correlations between pulmonary function and scores for chest tomography, disease activity, cumulative damage, and quality of life. Methods: This prospective, cross-sectional study evaluated 20 patients with JDM aged between 6 and 18 years. Spirometry, plethysmography, diffusing capacity of the lungs for carbon monoxide (DLCO), 6-minute walk test (6MWT), and chest tomography (CT) examinations were performed. Disease Activity (DAS), muscle strength (CMAS and MMT), cumulative damage (MDI), and quality of life (PedsQL) scores were also evaluated. Results: Twenty patients were included in the study (mean age of 11.6 years). Mild or moderate pulmonary obstruction was observed in 35% of patients, and decreased pulmonary diffusion was observed in 20% of patients. Spirometric and/or diffusion abnormalities occurred in 45% of patients. With regard to the plethysmography results: total lung capacity (TLC) decreased in 25% of patients, conductance decreased in 50% of patients, and the residual volume (RV)/TLC ratio decreased in 35% of patients. Thirteen patients underwent CT; of these, 8 cases involved interstitial changes (n=6) and mixed disorders (n=2). The significant correlations (p < 0.05) were: forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1)/vital capacity (VC) versus DAS, PedsQL, CMAS, and CT; conductance versus DAS, MDI, and PedsQL; 6MWT versus CMAS; DLCO versus MDI and CMAS; CT versus MDI, forced expiratory flow between 25% and 75% of vital capacity (FEF25-75%), conductance, CMAS, PedsQL, and DAS. Conclusion: Plethysmography, DLCO, and 6MWT can be used as complementary tests for the detection of functional disorders in patients with JDM. The significant correlations between functional, structural, and cumulative damage parameters indicate that pulmonary function abnormalities may be associated with disease control, severity, and activity and can influence the quality of life of these patients. Obstructive functional disorder due to inflammatory disease of the airways may constitute an early change in lung disease in JDM

Introduction: In Positron Emission Tomography (PET), the use of resolution modelling (RM) in iterative image reconstruction enables the modelling of aspects of detection which result in mispositioning of measured data and the subsequent blurring of reconstructed images. RM reconstruction can result in significant improvements in spatial resolution, voxel variance and count rate bias and could be a software alternative to detection hardware that is able to achieve higher resolution. Such hardware typically consists of small scintillation crystals, small bore diameters and depth of interaction discrimination, such as for the High Resolution Research Tomograph (HRRT, Siemens), which used a double crystal layer phoswich detector system. However, RM implementation comes with penalties such as slower rates of convergence, potentially higher region of interest variance and Gibbs artefacts. Methods: Assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of RM was done in the first part of this thesis together with the measurement and modelling of spatially varying resolution kernels for different scanner configurations and PET isotopes for the HRRT. It is also unclear as to whether high resolution scanning offers significant advantages over clinical PET-CT scanners for applications in the head. Through direct comparison to our HRRT, we explore whether there are significant advantages of high resolution scanning for an application in the head over clinical PET-CT. For this comparison our Biograph TruePoint TrueV (Siemens) optimised for whole body imaging was used and a novel clinical study using both scanners was set where we scanned Neurofibromatosis 2 (NF2) patients with vestibular schwannomas (VS) using [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and [18F]fluorothymidine (FLT). The clinical objective was to assess if uptake within VS of FLT and FDG could be measured and whether this uptake was predictive of tumour growth. Finally an assessment of the feasibility and impact of reducing the original injected activities in our clinical study was performed using bootstrapping resampling. Conclusions: RM provides greater but additive improvements in image resolution compared to DOI on the HRRT. Isotope specific image based RM could be estimated from published positron range distributions and measurements using fluorine-18. With the clinical project, uptake of FDG and FLT within the VS lesions was observed, these uptake values were correlated to each other, and high uptake was predictive of tumour growth with little differences in predictive power between FLT and FDG. Although there were benefits of the HRRT for imaging small lesions, in our clinical application there was little difference between the two scanners to discriminate lesion growth. Using the PET-CT scanner data and knowledge of lesion location, doses could be reduced to 5-10% without any significant loss of ability to discriminate lesion growth.

O presente trabalho descreve o desenvolvimento de um sistema de tomografia por Ressonância Magnética, para uso em diagnósticos médicos. Ele foi baseado em subsistemas disponíveis comercialmente, tais como os utilizados em equipamentos de imagens de RM comerciais. As principais contribuições deste projeto foram: o desenvolvimento de circuitos eletrônicos complementares e \"software\", necessários para tomar o \"hardware\" adquirido em um Tomógrafo de Ressonância Magnética para diagnósticos médicos. Isso não inclui somente o projeto de complexos programas necessários para gerar os pulsos de RF, formas de onda dos gradientes, sistema de aquisição de dados e as seqüências de pulsos necessárias para o completo sincronismo, mas também o desenvolvimento de uma interface amigável para realizar: a entrada de informações do paciente; a seleção das técnicas de imagem e o \"software\" interativo para visualização e seleção de planos. Um novo algoritmo de compressão de dados, para reduzir o armazenamento necessário de dados de imagens de RM, sem perda de informação foi também apresentado e implementado. Uma comparação com outras implementações de compressão de uso geral foi apresentada para mostrar uma performance superior na taxa de compressão e tempo de execução. / The present work describes the development of a Magnetic Resonance Tomography system to be used for medical diagnostics. It is based on commercially available subsystems such as used as in commercial MRI equipments. The main contributions to the project were: the development of fill up electronics and software needed to turn the acquired hardware into a MR Tomography for medical diagnostics. This includes not only the design of complex software needed to generate the used RF pulses, gradient waveforms, data acquisition system and the desired pulse sequences to synchronize all, but also the development of a user friendly interface to do: the entrance of patient\'s information; the selection of MR imaging techniques and interactive software for image viewing and planes selection. A new data compression algorithm to reduce the storage requirement of raw MR image data without information losses is also presented and implemented. A comparison with others general purpose compression implementations is presented to show the superior performance in the compression rate and execution time.

The aim of this in vitro study was to analyse the performance of CAD/CAM resin-based composites for the fabrication of long-term temporary fixed dental prostheses (FDP) and to compare it to other commercially available alternative materials regarding its long-term stability. Four CAD/CAM materials [Structur CAD (SC), VITA CAD-Temp (CT), Grandio disc (GD), and Lava Esthetic (LE)] and two direct RBCs [(Structur 3 (S3) and LuxaCrown (LC)] were used to fabricate three-unit FDPs. 10/20 FDPs were subjected to thermal cycling and mechanical loading by chewing simulation and 10/20 FDPs were stored in distilled water. Two FDPs of each material were forwarded to additional image diagnostics prior and after chewing simulation. Fracture loads were measured and data were statistically analysed. SC is suitable for use as a long-term temporary (two years) three-unit FDP. In comparison to CT, SC featured significantly higher breaking forces (SC > 800 N; CT < 600 N) and the surface wear of the antagonists was (significantly) lower and the abrasion of the FDP was similar. The high breaking forces (1100–1327 N) of GD and the small difference compared to LE regarding flexural strength showed that the material might be used for the fabrication of three-unit FDPs. With the exception of S3, all analysed direct or indirect materials are suitable for the fabrication of temporary FDPs.

In der Regel wird die vollständig aktive Magnetlagerung eines Rotors durch zwei Radial- und ein Axialmagnetlager realisiert. Für Anwendungen, bei denen die axiale Ausdehnung des Rotors zur Unterbringung eines zweiten Radiallagers nicht ausreicht, sind alternative Lösungsansätze notwendig. Nachfolgend wird die Auslegung, Simulation und experimentelle Validierung am Beispiel eines Demonstrators in Außenläuferbauweise vorgestellt. Außerdem werden der Bau und die Inbetriebnahme eines Prototyps zur Lagerung eines Computertomographen vorgestellt. / The active magnetic suspension of a rotor is generally realized by two radial and one axial magnetic bearing. For applications in which the axial expansion of the rotor is not sufficient to accommodate a second radial bearing, alternative solutions are required. In the following, the design, simulation and experimental validation are presented using the example of a demonstrator in external rotor design. The construction and commissioning of a prototype bearing for a computer tomograph is also presented.

Concretes reinforced by, using distributed steel reinforcements (fibres) are known as fibre-concrete. In case of disturbances or accidents of concrete structures reinforced with wires, it is necessary to carefully examine the actual implementation of dispersed reinforcement. Fibre concretes belong to modern building materials whose possible applications have not been fully utilized so far. Have been mainly used for floor structures loaded with factory halls and warehouses. Recently, thanks to well-known physical and mechanical properties of fibre-concrete, there were numerous attempts of designers, and namely investors, to utilize this kind of materials for support structures either. Favorable properties of wire-concrete can be utilized if there is a necessity to increase the resistance of concrete to stresses exceeding its strength, cyclic stress or impact stress. Daily practice shows to prove that the applications of fibre-concrete in such structures lead to the economic success. Necessary condition for successful application of steel fiber reinforced concrete in constructions however consists in its uniform dispersion, a homogeneous distribution of the wires throughout the volume of the structure. In case of inappropriate processing and deposition of the mixture during the manufacturing process fiber-concrete structures, the fibers are often unevenly distributed. Wires itself represent unfavourably shaped mixture components and they are extremely deteriorating its workability. A grouping of wires may be encountered as well, which reduces the overall homogeneity and the quality of steel fiber-concrete structures. If the homogeneity of fibre-concrete is not kept, the material possess different properties in various parts of the structure (for example, tensile strength), which can lead to defects in the structure (generation and development of cracks). The relevant lower reliability of the structure which is caused by unequal distribution of fibres (wires) in concrete volume can lead to damage of the property as well as the safety and the human lives can be jeopardized. Hence it is necessary to secure the effective control of the fibre-concrete homogeneity in ready support fibre-concrete structures. Contemporary homogeneity control is still ongoing on fresh blends, but if the fibre-concrete hardened and is a part of the construction, no known reliable methods are currently in available to test the homogeneity of the fibre-concrete on the structure without its destruction. The methods developed to control the concentration of wires in wire-concrete structures are based mostly on magnetic or electromagnetic properties of wires. The thesis deals with the development of the magnetic method in situ using permanent magnets for monitoring the distribution of fibers in hardened steel fiber-concrete structures. The test principle is based on measurements of the changes in magnetic field strength of permanent magnets which are induced by a change in wire distribution in steel fibre-concrete structure. Test is characterized as a so called local- failure- test using a small diameter core drill. In this sense it is a semi-destructive method.

The scope of the current research work was to evaluate the potential of the latest version of Microsoft Kinect sensor (Kinect v2) as an external tracking device for head motion during brain imaging with brain Positron Emission Tomography (PET). Head movements constitute a serious degradation factor in the acquired PET images. Although there are algorithms implementing motion correction using known motion data, the lack of effective and reliable motion tracking hardware has prevented their widespread adoption. Thus, the development of effective external tracking instrumentation is a necessity. Kinect was tested both for Siemens High-Resolution Research Tomograph (HRRT) and for Siemens ECAT HR PET system. The face Application Programming Interface (API) ’HD face’ released by Microsoft in June 2015 was modified and used in Matlab environment. Multiple experimental sessions took place examining the head tracking accuracy of kinect both in translational and rotational movements of the head. The results were analyzed statistically using one-sample Ttests with the significance level set to 5%. It was found that kinect v2 can track the head with a mean spatial accuracy of µ0 &lt; 1 mm (SD = 0,8 mm) in the y-direction of the tomograph’s camera, µ0 &lt; 3 mm (SD = 1,5 mm) in the z-direction of the tomograph’s camera and µ0 &lt; 1 ◦ (SD &lt; 1 ◦ ) for all the angles. However, further validation needs to take place. Modifications are needed in order for kinect to be used when acquiring PET data with the HRRT system. The small size of HRRT’s gantry (over 30 cm in diameter) makes kinect’s tracking unstable when the whole head is inside the gantry. On the other hand, Kinect could be used to track the motion of the head inside the gantry of the HR system.

Electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance are two different methods for measuring of neural activity. EEG signals have excellent time resolution, fMRI scans capture records of brain activity in excellent spatial resolution. It is assumed that the joint analysis can take advantage of both methods simultaneously. Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM8) is freely available software which serves to automatic analysis of fMRI data estimated with general linear model. It is not possible to estimate automatic EEG–fMRI analysis with it. Therefore software EEG Regressor Builder was created during master thesis. It preprocesses EEG signals into EEG regressors which are loaded with program SPM8 where joint EEG–fMRI analysis is estimated in general linear model. EEG regressors consist of vectors of temporal changes in absolute or relative power values of EEG signal in the specified frequency bands from selected electrodes due to periods of fMRI acquisition of individual images. The software is tested on the simultaneous EEG-fMRI data of a visual oddball experiment. EEG regressors are calculated for temporal changes in absolute and relative EEG power values in three frequency bands of interest ( 8-12Hz, 12-20Hz a 20-30Hz) from the occipital electrodes (O1, O2 and Oz). Three types of test analyzes is performed. Data from three individuals is examined in the first. Accuracy of results is evaluated due to the possibilities of setting of calculation method of regressor. Group analysis of data from twenty-two healthy patients is performed in the second. Group EEG regressors analysis is realized in the third through the correlation matrix due to the specified type of power and frequency band outside of the general linear model.

Ziel dieser In-vitro-Studie war es, die Leistungsfähigkeit von kunststoffbasierten CAD/CAM-Kompositen für die Herstellung von langzeitprovisorischem, festsitzendem Zahnersatz (FDP) zu analysieren und sie hinsichtlich ihrer Langzeitstabilität mit anderen handelsüblichen Alternativmaterialien zu vergleichen. Vier CAD/CAM-Materialien [Structur CAD (SC), VITA CAD-Temp (CT), Grandio disc (GD) und Lava Esthetic (LE)] und zwei direkte RBC's [(Structur 3 (S3) und LuxaCrown (LC)] wurden zur Herstellung von dreigliedrigen Brücken verwendet. 10/20 Brücken wurden einer Alterungssimulation mittels Thermocycling und mechanischer Belastung durch Kausimulation unterzogen und die anderen 10 Brücken wurden in destilliertem Wasser gelagert. Zwei Brücken von jedem Material wurden vor und nach der Kausimulation einer zusätzlichen Bilddiagnostik unterzogen. Die Bruchbelastung wurde gemessen und die Daten wurden statistisch ausgewertet.:Inhaltsverzeichnis 1. Einführung 1 1.1 Einleitung 1 1.2 Werkstoffe auf Kunststoffbasis für die subtraktive CAD/CAM-Technologie 3 1.3 Werkstoffbezogene Parameter 5 1.3.1 Zeitraffende Beanspruchung 6 1.3.2 Abrasion 7 1.3.3 Oberflächenrauheit 8 1.3.4 Mikrostruktur 9 1.3.5 Mechanische Belastbarkeit 10 1.4 Zielsetzung und Fragestellung der vorliegenden Studie 10 2. Publikationsmanuskript 12 3. Zusammenfassung der Arbeit 28 4. Literaturverzeichnis 32 5. Anlagen 38 5.1 Darstellung des eigenen Beitrags zur Publikationspromotion 38 5.2 Erklärung über die eigenständige Abfassung der Arbeit 39